“I don’t know when other people start their Christmas shopping, but I’m done,” Mrozek says, laughing.

When Mrozek speaks, her sentences are half businesswoman and half creator of Christmas magic. She can prattle off the square footage needed to package and co-ordinate thousands of gifts on a tight schedule, but also refers to her team as “elves” in most sentences.

As the director of the Star’s charities and philanthropy, the Santa Claus Fund has been under Mrozek’s direction for a decade. “There’s one thing right dead in the centre, and that’s a big heart — make that thousands of hearts from everyone involved,” she says of the project.

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Established in 1906, the Star Santa Claus Fund is a charity initiative that provides and delivers Christmas gifts to 45,000 underprivileged children aged newborn to 12 across Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering. The presents are delivered by teams of volunteers.

Recipients receive a gift box with a warm shirt (toddlers get a fleece-lined tracksuit while newborn infants get a five-piece set that includes onesies), a warm hat, warm gloves or mittens, socks, a toy, a book, cookies and dental hygiene items (aged 4 and up) inside.

It’s the only present many of the kids will receive this holiday season, which is why the gift boxes aim to cover the basics and then some.

The process begins in February each year, when orders are placed with manufacturers overseas. It takes time for the products to be made, then more still for them to be shipped. Mrozek then has to account for the time it’ll take to clear Canadian customs. This all takes many months.

The gifts will arrive at “Santa’s secret workshop” by September. Finding a workshop big enough — “it has to be at least 40,000 square feet,” Mrozek explains — is one of the challenges the Santa Fund faces each year.

A team of 10 “elves” will spend the entire month of October hand-packing each box, aided by the kindness of volunteers.

“By late October we start receiving all the children’s names and their addresses,” Mrozek says. The names are compiled into a database, and “the elves” begin to print off individual address labels. They cross their fingers each time that something as simple as a printer jam doesn’t get in the way.

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“Santa’s got a few brand-new printers on the I-want list,” she jokes.

The elves, with the help of volunteers, then go into the warehouse and “shops,” tying the right gifts together if they’re going to siblings in the same family. Those gifts are then organized and shipped to mini-warehouses in nearly 40 districts across the five different cities. Finding the various depot locations and securing all the sites within the first few weeks of November — for free — some in malls, some in churches, some in commercial units, is the next major challenge Mrozek faces each year. “Without these local pickup sites we couldn’t get our delivery process done as quickly as Santa,” she says.

“We break the city down just like Canada Post, into postal codes,” Mrozek says. Getting the gifts to their second locations — the “mini depots” where the gifts will be picked up for delivery — takes eight solid days of delivery, with two trucks leaving Santa’s warehouse per day.

By late November to mid-December, volunteers arrive at the mini-warehouses and are sent on their delivery routes. Sometimes, multiple delivery attempts are the only way to get the gift to the family it’s meant for. But, Mrozek says, it always comes together by Christmas.

“There’s an incredible amount of heart, not just from the staff that are working behind the scenes to make this all happen, but the hundreds of volunteers,” she says.

The 11-month job can be stressful at times, she admits, as there’s so much pre-planning to be done, so many details to remember and so many people involved, all to get that one box ready for delivery to that one child. “My hairdresser loves me because they get to cover my greys,” she laughs — but she’s learned the job from the ground up.

“It’s an incredibly fast-moving target. It’s like a speeding train that can go off the rails if all the right parts don’t fit,” she says.

“This charity has been around since 1906. Poverty isn’t necessarily going away anytime soon . . . whatever your beliefs may be, helping one another is one of the most joyous things you can do.”